


Frustration, Pain, and Financial Drain - It's Fun!

by w_k_smith



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Asexual main character, Board Games, Family Bonding, Multi, Pandemic - Freeform, Spot the Good Place Quote, bisexual main characters, full of headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24247165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_k_smith/pseuds/w_k_smith
Summary: The Deetz-Maitland-Beetlejuice family is coping pretty well with shelter-in-place, until Adam invents an extremely complicated board game that no one else can understand. As more of them stop playing, the more obsessed he gets with perfecting the rules, leaving Lydia worried about what the endpoint might be.
Relationships: Beetlejuice/Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Charles Deetz/Delia Deetz
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	Frustration, Pain, and Financial Drain - It's Fun!

**Author's Note:**

> First thing you should know, this story is largely meant to be cute and fun, but stay-at-home and pandemic anxiety are essential to the setting and are referenced throughout, so if you came here to forget all that for a few seconds, just, you know, feel free to read something else.
> 
> Also, not that this is crucial, but in my head this story takes place almost exactly a year after the events of the musical. I figure the musical must happen in the first half of the year, maybe the spring, because I think that’s when Girl Scouts usually start selling cookies door-to-door. But the Census worker implies it’s taking place, what, in the summer of 2020? Soooooo…right after the end of the school year, maybe? I’ve definitely wasted too many brain cells on this, and, gosh, I didn’t have many to start with.
> 
> And, yes, this was totally inspired by the Cones of Dunshire.

**Day 1**

No one knew what Adam was up to until it was too late.

The Maitlands loved their hobbies. Barbara often said picking up and putting down new hobbies was their _only_ consistent hobby, and Lydia considered it to be one of the most fun things about them. Every couple of months, Adam and Barbara found something new they wanted to try, and asked a living member of the household to pick up supplies at the craft or hardware store.

The Maitlands would be the first to admit that they often had more enthusiasm than talent, but sometimes one or both of them turned out to be really good at something. They’d knit sweaters for every person, living and dead, in the house for Christmas. Beetlejuice refused to admit how much he loved the pullover his boyfriend and girlfriend made for him, and wore it nonstop for weeks, and only Barbara’s puppy-dog eyes had convinced him to part with it for one afternoon so she could wash it.

So Lydia was curious when Adam gathered an armload of scrap paper and cardboard and disappeared into the attic. She hoped it would be fun, or at least interesting, because she was anxious and bored enough that she was starting to miss school.

Connecticut’s shelter-in-place order had cast a new energy on the house. Lockdown was going fine, with a few bumps. Even with the protection of Beetlejuice’s sandworm-wrangling skills, the ghosts didn’t leave the house much, and were happy for the extra company. Beetlejuice had volunteered to do grocery shopping, but wasn’t one for sticking to a list or following directions, and had come back with eight boxes of Kashi cereal, a kumquat, and fish food. Delia was coping by meditating and doing yoga in the backyard up to six hours a day. She’d banned any discussion of the news in her presence, and Lydia still found her stress-vaping on the porch at three in the morning.

Lydia was annoyed at how well her father was doing. Charles was adept at sewing masks out of scrap fabric, and kept his hands busy by making piles of them during his endless Zoom work meetings. He’d also forced a quiet hours rule for those Zoom meetings after Lydia and Beetlejuice played a game of tag that ended with a broken window.

“Restricting the movements of the people is a symptom of a fascist state,” Lydia told her father.

“Go do your schoolwork,” he said.

“It’s Saturday. And I did it already! How do you think I know so much about fascism?”

He pressed his thumbs between his eyebrows. “I don’t care if you play around with Lawrence all day.” Charles had taken to calling Beetlejuice by his first name, because he had to explain Beetlejuice’s presence whenever Beetlejuice was around when visitors came over, or, these days, whenever Beetlejuice barged into his office while the webcam was on. “This is Lawrence, my oldest,” Charles typically said, quickly and gruffly, and people seemed to assume he meant “my oldest son, who I have from a previous marriage,” rather than “my oldest dead roommate who is my daughter’s best friend and is in a committed relationship with the deceased couple in the attic.” And Charles himself seemed fine with the assumption. It delighted Beetlejuice utterly. “Please just be _quiet_ for a few hours.”

Lydia sighed, and stormed off. “We have to make as much noise as possible today,” she told Beetlejuice when she found him sitting at the top of the stairs.

“Normally, I’d love that, but we have a new problem,” he said. “Adam’s being weird.”

“Everyone in this house is weird,” Lydia reminded him.

“Adam’s destroying the living room.”

Lydia leaned over the banister. Adam had covered the living room floor with scribbled-on pieces of paper, figurines, and little improvised game pieces. He was speaking intensely to Barbara, but her head was tilted to one side, like she did when she was confused.

“What are you doing?” Lydia asked, walking downstairs. Beetlejuice floated behind her.

“I invented a board game!” Adam said.

“He did. It’s called, um…?” Barbara trailed off.

“It doesn’t have a name yet,” Adam said. “But it’s part Risk, part Monopoly, part Dungeons and Dragons.”

Lydia frowned. “That sounds–”

“Do you want to try it?” he asked, and his eyes were so bright and excited Lydia couldn’t turn him down.

“Let’s all play,” she said. “I’ll get Delia.”

“I’ll get Da-CHARLES,” Beetlejuice said.

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was sitting in the living somewhere that wasn’t covered with paper. Adam gave them all a set of pieces, but they each seemed to have a different assortment, because, as far as Lydia could tell, they were playing against each other. Except where the game was collaborative. Except where they had to group into different factions.

“I’m very confused,” Delia whispered to Lydia.

“I am, too,” Lydia whispered back.

“Why don’t we all ever play the games I make up?” Beetlejuice asked.

Charles didn’t look up from the board. “Because, Lawrence, much like you, most of them are very messy and hard to understand.” The roots of Beetlejuice’s hair started to turn purple. “Ergo, you are not allowed in charge of family game time.”

“ _Family_ game time?” Beetlejuice repeated, and the purple faded back to green.

Lydia saw Barbara catch Beetlejuice’s eye and mouth _Oh, he loves you_ right before Adam announced he had an idea for a new challenge play.

**Day 2**

One by one, the players dropped out of the game.

Charles was the first to go, because he got an emergency call from the vice-director-of-blah-blah-blah. Beetlejuice kept cheating, was ejected from the game by group consensus, and spent several hours sulking behind the couch.

Delia gave it a valiant try. She put more effort into following along than anyone except Barbara. Her enthusiasm started real, became fake, and ended with her asleep on the floor wrapped up in her caftan.

Lydia stopped playing, but stayed in the living room. She messed around on her phone but kept an eye on the Maitlands, wondering how far the game would go.

Finally, right before midnight, Barbara gave up. “Are you going to be OK on your own for a while?” she asked.

“Sure!” Adam said. “I’ll have this perfected in no time.”

Lydia watched him tape two pieces of poster board together, then went upstairs to go to bed. She hoped he’d be done by morning.

**Day 3**

Lydia began to get worried. Adam’s game spread across the living room like a spider’s web, as he added more pieces, more levels, more intricate steps that only he could understand. It still didn’t have a name.

“Ghosts can get obsessed,” Beetlejuice told Lydia. “How do you think some of them keep haunting the same hallways for centuries without imploding from boredom? I’ve never seen a ghost get this wrapped up in a board game, though.”

“Something you haven’t seen?” she said. “That’s concerning.”

**Day 4**

Lydia made Barbara and Beetlejuice sit down in the kitchen.

“I need your help,” she told them.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Barbara asked.

“Whose body do you need me to hide?” Beetlejuice asked.

“We have to stop Adam.” Lydia pointed behind her at the living room. “This is madness. And not good madness. You guys have to stop him.”

Barbara nodded. “We _have_ talked to him. But he’s pretty determined about this game. I suppose we could start another conversation…”

“I don’t mean that,” Lydia said. “I meant other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” Barbara asked, frowning. But Beetlejuice was grinning, because of course he was.

“I mean distract him romantically,” Lydia said. “Look, kissing is gross – you’re just mashing your food holes together. But this house is getting desperate. If you alloromantic people can’t use your wiles–”

Beetlejuice choked on nothing. “ _Wiles_?”

“–What’s the point of having them?”

“That’s not appropriate, Lydia,” Barbara sighed.

“I’m offended you assumed I hadn’t tried already,” Beetlejuice said.

“We have to scare him out of it,” Lydia said. She and Beetlejuice stood in the foyer, right outside the living room, watching Adam drift around his enormous board. “Like the hiccups.”

“I’ll do the snake face,” Beetlejuice said. He started to storm in, but Lydia grabbed his sleeve.

“He’s seen the snake face. You do it all the time,” she said.

“Ooh, oh, what if I make the furniture come alive, and they all behave like different wild animals, and they all have teeth–”

“That’s not shocking enough. How about that thing where you turn yourself inside out?”

Finger guns. “I like the way you think, scarecrow.”

Beetlejuice strode into the living room, out of Lydia’s line of vision.

“Hey, sexy,” she heard him say. “Having fun – _aaagh_!” A squelch, splattering sound, a howl through an inside out mouth.

“Hi, BJ,” Adam said, his tone distant. “Can you hand me that deck of cards?”

“There are cards now?” Lydia whispered.

She heard a wet _snap_ as Beetlejuice put himself back together. “Sure. Happy to. This isn’t disappointing at all.”

**Day 5**

“Hey, guys?” Adam asked from the other room.

Lydia walked in cautiously. The debris of the game was still strewn all over the living room, so you couldn’t tell if the current round was in progress, or if a tornado had hit a hobby store.

“This is nothing, isn’t it?” Adam said, in a tired, defeated voice.

Lydia nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“I just wanted a distraction,” Adam said. “I know we’re all as safe as we can be in here, I just get so _worried_.”

“Adam’s back! C’m’ere, hot stuff” Beetlejuice charged down the stairs, tackled Adam onto the sofa, and kissed him on the mouth. “Babs and I thought we’d lost you for good!”

“We didn’t think that,” Barbara said. She squeezed Adam’s shoulders.

“I completely understand, Adam,” Delia said, coming in from the kitchen. Charles was close behind her. “I’ve found diversion to be the best way of coping when life gets upsetting. When I was kicked out of that all-women ska band in the ’90’s, I threw myself into underground poker tournaments, and long story short I was briefly engaged to a prince of what turned out to be a micronation.”

“I’ll clean up the mess,” Adam sighed. Lydia suspected that would be easier said than done, because Beetlejuice was still sitting on Adam’s lap and wasn’t acting like he was planning to move.

“Then let’s do something fun together,” Delia said.

“Monopoly?” Lydia suggested, unable to hide her grin.

A chorus of “Absolutely not!” and “That’s not funny, young lady!” with Beetlejuice adding a mock-offended “Lydia Cordelia Deetz, who raised you?” though that wasn’t even close to her middle name.

“I’m kidding,” she said.

“How about a movie?” Barbara said, scooping up the closest pile of papers.

“Make it something with a lot of sequels,” Charles said. “We’re at home for the long haul, after all.”

“We’ll have to remember all this for the next plague,” Beetlejuice said. Lydia could have asked him why he sounded so sure when he said “ _next_ ,” but decided it was just better to get some popcorn and ignore it.

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, I think at this point Charles really is fond of Beetlejuice. Charles just keeps his emotions close to his chest, and Beetlejuice needs to be reassured eight times a day that you actually want him around.
> 
> Any comments are appreciated, and I'll probably reply, but if you don't comment, have a nice day.
> 
> I hope you guys are staying safe. Wash your hands, wear a mask, and be kind to one another.


End file.
